Category Archives: living

This is… was going to be my ROW80 goal post. Thing is… I don’t really have any goals in mind special for Round 4. There are, of course, the usual suspects: finish the Swan Song series, maintain the Row80 blog (though not for a few weeks… Denise Young has kindly offered to help there while I’m in Europe with my son), and prepare to move to New Jersey.

All those are over-arching goals though… grand plans as it were and not very definable. The multitude of steps each requires can be daunting… has been daunting in some cases. If nothing else, this trip overseas has allowed me to step back and NOT feel obliged to do things, which has oddly made me more productive than I’ve been in a while.

Departure

I even indulged my photography passion some. The stairs image I snapped as we used the Tube at Earl’s Court station. I took some window pics of our departure (Newark Airport) and landing (Reykjavik). Since my seat was just over the wing and I had to hold the camera sideways, I’m really happy with the way these pictures came out.

Arrival

I did some editing.

I actually posted to Facebook (a lot… especially for me). In fact, during the wait at the airports, I probably spent more time on Facebook than I had all year before this. It would have been nice if I’d been able to edit or write, but the brain just would not accept being made to focus. I even tried starting this post then… It didn’t work.

But all of this leave me still wondering what my goals are for Round 4. I’d say just getting through it without tearing my hair out would be a good start for me, but that’s really just a cop-out. I need to think more about the steps involved in achieving those grand goals.

Maybe that should be my goal for this Round of Words… As well as maintaining thw ROW80 blog and writing new words. Even throwaway words encourage new ideas… Yeah. Those are my goals.

Any normal week, I’d be prepping my (late) WIPpet Wednesday post. This being the week between Christmas and New Years and all the chaos contained within… well, it’s not a normal week.

There’s not going to be a post beyond this little note. Life is good, but very cold here in the wilds of Upstate NY. The holiday “feel” has already faded some, it seems to me, though it could be the fact I’ve been spending most of my last few days reading murder mysteries (the delightful Gaslight series by Victoria Thompson and the newish Molly Murphy books by Rhys Bowen) and waiting for your son to finish his days at soccer camp. The family visits are an”in progress” affair, but we’ve made a few already.

In all, the Holidays have been what they should be… a time of change and tradition merged into one.

After last Wednesday, I needed to step back and slow down a bit. For the first few days, I did a lot of busy work, just to keep my mind off things, knowing that my creative moments would be filled with thoughts of kitties and loss. I’m one of those people who rushes into the “make all the arrangements” side of grieving, because to stop and feel that soon, that close to a death of a loved one is too hard.

Let time do its part and soften the edges some. Let me accept that s/he isn’t around anymore to see, spend time with… Let the change in presence feel more gradual.

Though he wasn’t referring to grieving per se in his essay Common Sense, Thomas Paine was spot on when he stated:

But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

Change is inevitable and vital, but when forced to face it head-on, many of us balk. We revert to old patterns. We resist or deny.

I took pictures.

Not pictures of the sweet Mrrp, but of flowers. When I started trying to develop some real photography skills, I worked mostly with flowers. They were more agreeable to standing still for extended periods of time while I tweaked ISO settings and adjusted my white balance than my son or wildlife tended to be.

I used my old iPhone because getting out the Canon and kit just seemed to be too much fuss. These pictures are not high art. Just a moment captured, an attempt to slightly immortalize a thing of beauty that dwindles all too fast…

Exactly the type of thing that one needs to do at times like these.

So here goes:

Looking down into a Poem of Ecstasy iris

And though definitely less flashy, these classic “Great Lakes” irises have the most amazing fragrance. This page compares it to magnolias. I find them closer to a slightly spicy root beer float.

In the shadow and reddish hues of the tri-color birch, this blue beauty seems almost purple

I love irises. I think I could easily make a yard full of them. These and a carpet of creeping thyme and clover instead of grass…

My ROW80 Check-in and Assessment

Normally I would post a list of my goals. Being so close to the end of the ROWnd, it seems all the more necessary to consider all my progress (and failures) so more consideration toward next ROWnds plans might be made.

Screw consideration…

I’m writing. Since Wednesday, my daily total plummeted (I’m squeaking out my 750words a day, but little more) from often over 2500 to around 800. I’ve only done my Five (handwritten) Sentences twice. I typed in two pages for the first time last night instead of writing this post.

And I showed up and put in my time for my JuNoWriMo sprints, but was too distracted to get words of my own most days. I’m not sure now if it’s a good thing that I have most of this week off (our wedding anniversary is Wednesday, and so I asked for some family time)—as much as the distractions slowed me down, they also kept me involved in writing and people.

It’s not like this December and January where I drifted out of touch with the whole world because there was so much loss to deal with. Love or not, Mr. Kitty was a cat, and as an outdoor, mostly still feral animal, I always knew he would not only die eventually but likely sooner because of his life. But I also knew he was happier with his life as it was (except in the winter… he’d have liked to have stayed inside during the winter) than deal with the other occupants of our house beyond me.